School of the Americas:
School of Assassins, USA

" We routinely had Latin American students
at the School of the Americas (SOA) who were known human rights
abusers, and it didn't make any difference to us."

Major Joseph Blair (retired), former SOA instructor

World War II was the "good war". After that conflict,
most Americans believed that US intentions in the world were noble
-- the US was the punisher of aggression and a warrior for freedom.
This image was for generations of Americans the measure by which
they judged their country in world affairs. The war in Vietnam
ended the illusion that America was always on the "right
side". Today, America's image as a defender of democracy
and justice has been further eroded by the School of the Americas
(SOA), which trains Latin American and Caribbean military officers
and soldiers to subvert democracy and kill hope in their own countries.

Founded by the United States in 1946, the SOA was initially located
in Panama, but in 1984 it was kicked out under the terms of the
Panama Canal Treaty and moved to the army base at Fort Benning,
Georgia. Then-President of Panama Jorge Illueca called it "the
biggest base for de-stabilization in Latin America," and
a major Panamanian newspaper dubbed it " The School of Assassins."

Today, SOA instructors and students are recruited from the cream
of the Latin American military establishment. The School trains
700-2,000 soldiers a year, and since its inception in 1946, more
than 60,000 military personnel have graduated from the SOA.

If the SOA concentrated its training on protecting country borders
from foreign aggression or safeguarding citizens from invasion
by outside enemies, it would be considered an exemplary institution,
worth the cost of American tax dollars and US prestige. But, the
SOA has very different goals. Its curriculum includes courses
in psychological warfare, counterinsurgency, interrogation techniques,
and infantry and commando tactics. Presented with the most sophisticated
and up-to-date techniques by the US Army's best instructors, these
courses teach military officers and soldiers of Third World countries
to subvert the truth, to muzzle union leaders, activist clergy,
and journalists, and to make war on their own people. It prepares
them to subdue the voices of dissent and to make protesters submit.
It instructs them in techniques of marginalizing the poor, the
hungry, and the dispossessed. It tells them how to stamp out freedom
and terrorize their own citizens. It trains them to destroy the
hope of democracy.

The School of the Americas (SOA) has been given other names --
"School for Dictators", "School of Assassins",
and "Nursery of Death Squads". And, countries with the
worst human rights records send the most soldiers to the School.

When they return to their home countries, graduates of the SOA
hold a rather unique and peculiar view of their countrymen. They
look upon priests, social workers, journalists, and liberal intellectuals,
not as assets to their societies, but as dangerous subversives,
working to undermine the system that keeps these soldiers, army
officers, and their sponsors in power.

Graduates of the SOA have been among the most repressive tyrants
in Latin America, and their actions have been some of the most
cruel and violent. In El Salvador, in 1989, a Salvadoran army
patrol executed six Jesuit priests as they lay face-down on the
ground at Central America University. According to the United
Nation's Truth Commission Report on El Salvador in 1993, 19 of
the 27 officers who took part in the executions were trained at
the SOA.

In 1990, in El Salvador, populist Archbishop Oscar Romero was
assassinated. Three-quarters of the Salvadoran officers implicated
in the killing were trained at the SOA. Roberto D'Aubuison, the
late leader of El Salvador's Death Squad, was implicated in the
plot to assassinate Archbishop Romero. He also participated in
numerous murders, including a massacre in the village of El Mazote,
where more than 900 men, women, and children were killed. He graduated
from SOA as well.

The U.N. Truth Commission's statistics reveal the extent of
the School's murderous role in El Salvador .

In other Latin American countries, graduates of the SOA have been
equally prominent enemies of human rights. Former dictators Omar
Torrijos of Panama, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Juan Velasco
Alvarado of Peru, all overthrew constitutionally elected governments
in their countries. Leopoldo Galtieri, the former head of the
Argentina junta defeated in the Falklands War, was responsible
for thousands of "disappeared" citizens who supported
freedom and democracy in Argentina, and paid the ultimate price
with their lives. He was an SOA graduate.

In Honduras, General Humberto Ragalado Hernandez, was trained
at the SOA at the same time that he was linked to Columbian drug
cartels, and the highest ranking officers in the Honduran Death
Squad were trained at SOA as well.

In Peru, the most senior officers convicted of the February 1994
murder of nine university students and a professor, were graduates
of the SOA. In Columbia, a 1992 human rights tribunal cited 246
officers for crimes against the people of Columbia. 105 of the
officers were trained at the SOA. In Panama, ex-dictator Manuel
Noriega, formerly on the CIA payroll, graduated from the SOA.
He is now in a US prison, convicted of trafficking in drugs.

In Guatemala, a country of 10 million, the indigenous Mayan population
of 6 million have endured the greatest suffering in Latin America.
During more than 30 years of civil war, tens-of-thousands have
been slaughtered, with the total killed estimated to exceed 200,000.
Most of the ranking generals involved in the numerous coups and
acts of terror and murder during this period were trained at the
SOA.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, in Guatemala, thousands of political
activists and opponents of government policies were assassinated.
General Manuel Antonio Callejas y Callejas, Chief of Army Intelligence
at the time, was cited by the UN as the individual responsible
for most of those murders. He graduated from the SOA. One of the
most vicious tyrants in recent Guatemalan history is Jose Efrain
Rios Montt. General, dictator, and a former president from 1982-83,
Rios Montt was proud of his political philosophy of "beans
for the obedient; bullets for the rest". He was also a graduate
of the SOA.

The impact of SOA graduates on Latin American freedom has been
devastating. Armed with sophisticated training, modern weapons,
and up-to-date techniques of control and surveillance, graduates
of the SOA have terrorized their own countrymen for a generation.

In the name of its citizens and using American taxpayer dollars,
the United States, the most-democratic of countries, has for decades
been training some of the most anti-democratic leaders in the
world. Administrations that have decried terrorism abroad, have
encouraged terrorists right here at home -- at the SOA.

Our country, for generations, a beacon of liberty and democracy
to the world, should play no part in subverting democracy and
killing hope in other countries. Americans who condemn world terror
should condemn just as strongly America's training of Third World
terrorists. It is time for all of us to demand that the School
of the Americas be closed.

What you can do

Call, fax, or write the President, and your Senators and Representative.
Ask them to end funding for the SOA and stop training terrorists
and murderers in America.

Ask them to support House of Representatives Bill -- HR 2652 --
introduced by Representative Joseph Kennedy (D-MA). This bill
would close the School of the Americas and establish in its place
an Academy for Democracy and Civil-Military Relations, to identify
the proper role of the military in a democratic society and bring
about civilian control over military matters in Latin America.

Father Roy Bourgeois founded SOA Watch to inform the American
public about " the School of Assassins" and to close
it down. But, he cannot do it alone. He needs the support of all
Americans who abhor the training of terrorists and murderers in
this country. Support SOA Watch and Father Roy Bourgeois at: